IT Major Forays in Broadcast Arena

Media e2e, Oracle and Wipro have formed a media technology consortium to provide ERP and CRM solutions to broadcasting and other media in India.

While Oracle would provide technical support, Wipro would be the system integrator and Media e2e would provide domain consultancy and expertise. The consortium would chiefly address the needs of broadcasting companies, private radio channels, content organizations among others.

Sunny Guptey, vice president, finance at Media e2e informed, “The consortium has just been formed. We are in the process of signing MoUs with companies. We would sign our first client in early 2007 and the systems will go live in mid 2007 for these clients.”

Oracle’s keenness to enter the multi-billion dollar media industry was apparent. It completed the acquisition of CRM solutions provider Seibel in June 2006. The acquisition enables Oracle to offer comprehensive business analytics solutions giving executives and managers the ability to monitor, analyze and act upon intelligence in real time while providing end-to-end visibility into company operations and financial performance.

Oracle that has already provided e-business suites to the manufacturing and finance services sectors, would provide similar technology platform to the media companies.
Media e2e would be project consultants. Explained Guptey, “The client would have certain legacy systems. We would customize our solutions based on those systems. Wipro’s technical experts would handle this aspect.”

The solutions will benefit the company and improve its project margins because of better reporting systems and analytic platforms, he said.

Rajan Sampath, general manager, data storage solutions at Wipro Infotech added, “The media industry has been focused on managing business domain perspective. With increasing competition in the market, there is a dying need for CEOs to get information on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to understand the profitability, feasibility and sustainability of various business parameters.”

Admitting that the IT industry lacks domain knowledge to convert current information into a P&L split, he noted that the consortium would bring together complete knowledge of this requirement translated to critical information for the CEOs and business heads in the industry. It would offer a competitive edge to the clients via-a-vis competition.

The venture would provide technology services for media and entertainment firms looking to scale up in a quickly evolving market as CEOs would be provided regular inputs in the form of reports and dashboards.

Distinguishing the roles of the three companies, Samapth said, “Media e2e would use its sales, implementation, consultants and top management for the purpose. We are building an exclusive team of sales, practice consultants, program managers and implementation people. Oracle is investing a media team of practice consultants and sales people.”

While Wipro refused to disclose investments towards the project, Guptey informed that for big clients each system would cost between 1.5 to 2 million dollars. However, he cautioned that pricing would be subject to the client requirement.

Oracle officials were not available for comment, despite repeated attempts.

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